Camille Mosley-Pasley's Mama Love

Carla Massoni just started a new blog - read it here

had just a great meeting with Chuck today. so much fun to brainstorm with someone who is so creative.

I read this on grammar.police the good, bad and ugly: best and worst buildings in dc read it here

Call for Artists!

A JURIED PERMANENT COLLECTION OF TO BENEFIT INOVA KELLAR CENTER
Due Date: February 8, 2008

Inova Kellar Center is a not-for profit outpatient mental health and special education facility devoted to caring for adolescents with emotional, behavioral, educational and substance abuse issues. Founded in 1991, with a visionary gift from Art and Betty Kellar, Inova Kellar Center has expanded its size and scope, adding a host of specialized services to meet growing needs. These include the Kellar School, a fully certified therapeutic day school for students with emotional and/or learning disabilities; an expanded day treatment program; medication management; home-based services; outpatient therapy programs; and Inova Kellar Camp, a therapeutic and interactive summer day camp for children ages 6-12.
Our hope in starting a permanent collection of artwork for Inova Kellar Center is to add color and inspiration to our hallways and to raise the spirits of students, patients, family members, friends and staff, and to help make Inova Kellar Center a more friendly and pleasant place to be. Artwork must be appropriate for our adolescent community and representative of the population we serve.

Bonnie Stauber
Inova Health System Foundation

11204 Waples Mill Road Fairfax,VA 22030
703-208-6622
Barbara.Stauber@inova.org

Millicent Young

I always enjoy going to Charlottesville, but this last trip was really extraordinary. Not only did I meet the lovely Cary Brown, on the way home I went on a studio visit to see Millicent Young. I have been looking for an artist, a sculptor specifically, to show at SFC in March. I found Millicent through the Washington Sculptors Group. I'd seen her work in group shows at Arlington Arts Center and Zenith Gallery and had thought about contacting her - so, finally the opportunity presented itself!

I hardly can put into words what an amazing experience it was to meet her and see her work in person. She lives on a farm in Ruckersville, so serene and beautiful you step out of the car, take a long deep breath and think oh my lord, I have found heaven.

There is a purity in Millicent's work, the materials are somehow scrubbed down to basics - clay, iron, glass, wood, bones, horsehair, wax... One piece especially, "Trans-" (image here) really moved me. The beauty of the x-ray of bones with the other elements of the piece is so thought provoking. (perhaps because I've always loved looking at x-rays and sonigrams - there is something so "secret of life" and private about them) Millicent's art feels inevitable. Her mastery of materials is coupled with a serious sense of play. She forces you to interact - to tease meaning out of the work. And there are layers and layers of meaning.



Millicent's artist statement.

As a sculptor, I am a citizen. All of my work is focused on the possibilities of transforming our Cartesian paradigm - a paradigm that is both personal and cultural and which enthrones separation and destruction as ways of being. The outcome of this way is the indiscriminate loss of our habitat and relations, be it through bombs or logging. It is the loss of Home and our sense of belonging. One power that Art has is that it can foment change by stirring the heart from within. It can show us what we cannot see. It reiterates the primordial process of creation - spirit into matter, formlessness into form - and can connect us to that which is greater than self. No less of a change is required.
And so, Hope resides at the core of my work. I seek to restore Beauty and Stillness as ways of knowing and as tools of transformation. The pieces are visual meditations that do not seek an answer to transformation but rather, pose questions about our constructions of reality, about possibility, and about process. They are invitations to dream this moment forward. They reveal a gap, the liminal gateway. The gap frames this premise: there is the known , the unknown, and the unknowable.



Millicent's web site is rich with content http://www.millicentyoung.com/

Gretch & I drove out to culpepper for P's bday. Nervous nelly that she is, she wouldn't let me take photos while I was driving. The landscape was enchanting, such subtle browns and grey against the white of the snow, the plow rows - just totally beautiful, with such a winter sky.

Anne Beck

I am totally totally in love with Anne Beck's work- what an amazing imagination and such a quirky sensitivity to the page. We have shown her at NIH and WCI and now she is on exhibit at Martha Jefferson along with Sara Poly and Cheryl Summers. So if you are in Charlottesville - go see it!

an utterly beautiful snowfall yesterday. I used the opportunity to leave early after meeting with a totally charming patient who would like to create a work of art and donate it to NIH. Lovely, lovely. Driving home was a little tough but as you can see the roads were clear. Made a nice dinner for the family and Keriann. Watched project runway which I'd slept through the night before and answered some emails. Today a sculptor is delivering work for an exhibit and then off to a meeting at SFC about the new gallery space. lots to do!

Jeanne Drevas

Jeanne exhibited with us at Smith Farm Center and NIH last year. She'll have a big one-person show at the USBG in March of 2009. We are really looking forward to it!

By Kevin H. Adams/Special to the Rappahannock News Source: Rappahannock News WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 9 2008

With the onset of winter, the greens of summer and the brilliant colors of fall are memories. But with Jeanne Drevas’ inaugural installation at the Six Pack Gallery’s new solo artist space, we are given the opportunity to appreciate the richness in color, smell, and texture of nature at it fullest.The piece, entitled "Ovoid," is a singular, 12x16', oval-shaped bowl. Suspended from the ceiling, it floats inches off the floor. "Ovoid" is best appreciated by sitting or lying on the floor (pillows provided).Jeanne hopes that guests to the gallery will want to sit and meditate, and not judge, but enjoy seeing and being in the room with the ovoid. Jeanne challenged herself to make as "large and massive" a piece as possible for the space. With this goal, the installation required a great deal of pre-planning and the help of seven volunteers, including Jeanne’s sister Nina (who has assisted with almost every Drevas installation) and her husband Carl. Jeanne also had the help of a Wakefield student, Jon Henry. "It was so great to have someone so young helping," said Drevas who noted that Henry has crafted his own cardboard installations. Using split bamboo, fine mesh netting, plastic ties, loblolly pine needles and gravity, the Ovoid curves away from you from every vantage point. Seeing light dissipate down the length of millions of pine needles is both stunning and magical. Jeanne Drevas has lived in the mountains of Rappahannock County since1972. Her life’s work has been her house, which she built using trees reaching through and supporting the frame, rush ceilings, and bamboo walls. She started out as a potter, and has danced with Sally Nash’s Last Minute Wood Company. Jeanne now feels at home here, after traveling and studying in Switzerland and Thailand."My work honors the cycles of birth, death, decay, and renewal. Ovoid is meant to return to the earth after the two months on display,"Drevas said. Gallery goers will be met by the aromatic smell of a forest floor or pine grove. "I have used loblolly pine needles because they are longer than white pine, and it was a loblolly grove that had the least debris from other trees. I have also learned a lot about working with bamboo on this project for the inner structure. I feel I have found myself with this piece."Coming to see Drevas's show will not only give you a visual and ethereal treat, but you can see the new look as the Six-Pack Gallery,which includes six members, is now housed in the first two front rooms as you enter The Packing Shed Gallery.The back room is now designated for solo shows, currently Amissville's Jack Frazier, is showing there. When you visit this new solo artist space and this installation, you will see the grand commitment that Jeanne Drevas gives to her art. Her creative spirit will fill your senses while lying or sitting with "Ovoid." The Six Pack Gallery is open 12:30 – 7 p.m. Thursday thru Sunday. An opening reception with the artist takes place Sunday, January 20 from 2-6 p.m.For information, phone (540) 675-3410

See Below

both Jessica and Carla have reminded me of Duane's blog recently. So I visited again and found the lovely video below of his painting. If you look the lightest lights are against the darkest darks - just like Ansel Adams.

Fruit Tart

I have seen the exhibit at Myers and I have to say I agree... see review here

Anne Leighton Massoni

I am so proud to be exhibiting Anne's work at Smith Farm Center and NIH. They are very different bodies of work but both so compelling. Our artist talk at SFC was heartfelt, Anne would not have created presence.in without the gallery at SFC as an exhibition venue. The work is too personal for a conventional gallery and too powerful for a hospital

At NIH, the work from her yours & mine series is a powerful demonstration - you can exhibit creative, challenging, thought provoking artwork in healthcare environment. Even the world's largest biomedical research facility - if you are sensitive to the affect the art might have on patients and caregivers. Anne's statement below.

yours & mine is a body of work in collaboration with chelsy c. usher. we met in a moment of serendipity, when chelsy unexpectedly moved into the apartment above mine in the tiny town of chestertown, maryland. shortly, and within months of each other, we both moved from the area but not without first having formed a close friendship. chelsy radically changed her life by joining the united states coast guard, while i moved to memphis, tennessee to take on the position of area head of photography at memphis college of art.

one evening, i received a late night and rather lonely "what are you up to" text message from chelsy, who had been relocated to a patrol boat in san diego, california. also missing her, i sent a cell phone image back. the image contained half of my face and half of my pillow, because, what i had been “up to” was sleeping. nearly simultaneously, the image was returned, only this time it was chelsy's face on her own pillow hundreds of miles away. it seemed, despite our distance, our thoughts were not far from one another’s. this exchange was the impetus for a body of work to catalog what were now disparate lives using our cell phones as the means. one half of the image always contains a bisection of our face and the other the background of our lives as we move through them.

the body of work has been collected as a single digital file, 40 inches tall by just over 50 feet in length. in addition diptychs are pulled out of the sequence, they are compelling pairings based more on aesthetic concerns than happenings or timing. at times our faces join to make one, and in others a simple comparison of side-by-side gazes and backgrounds exists. the body of work began in mid-october of 2006 and contains 1630 images, the cataloging of images ended exactly one year from its accidental beginning.

Anne's web site here

Cary Brown

I met the most enchanting artist in cville. godsister to my dear friend Isabel

Artist Statement

-Nature is a setting that fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

I was lucky to grow up on a farm in Kentucky where I was free to explore nature at my whim. Whether I was climbing beech trees, scaling fossil beds, searching for turtles, gazing at the constellations, my head was always filled with the magic of nature. I began to draw at an early age with one of my grandmothers (also a painter), who is a naturalist so our subjects were often things from the woods and on the farm: giant poplars, cows, donkeys, flowers, leaves, clouds and so on. She taught me that there was color in a shadow. Sometimes, I looked so hard I thought I could see wind. I went on to study art here at U.Va and then on to New York City where I began lessons in portrait painting at the New York Academy of Art. During that time, I desperately missed the country so I began painting made-up landscapes in my studio. When my husband and I moved to Charlottesville in 1993, I was delighted to return to nature. I was captivated by the glimmering light of Charlottesville, especially in the Spring, and I began to paint en plein air in the style of my professor, Richard Crozier. My mediums were pretty much oils and the occasional watercolors. After a life-threatening experience in 2005, I moved inward. I felt a need to take a closer look--a need to really feel and see life and death. I began to read a lot of poetry. My appetite grew for that big question: What is this all about? What is reality all about? What's going on above us, below us, around the back of a cone shell, in a wood pile, in the mind of an owl? So began my journey with this new work. Having studied photography at U.Va, I was drawn to that medium again when contemplating reality. The Polaroid emulsion process (explained in detail below) was a perfect match: it enhanced the ephemeral qualities, the elements of surprise, and humor, in nature. And I was able to create wind! A bowl of cherries (irony included) in the kitchen window took on layers of reality-- and chaos and order. I wanted to freeze all of that so I could study it. Gradually the work began to take on a life of it's own. Through the process I began to consider the spirit in these objects-- the light, the love, the energy, the beauty, the magic-- in essence, the truth. I began by rolling out the Polaroid image(s) first on paper. Then I'd sit back and let the piece speak to me. A story evolved: I would see it, hear it, and then go in with color, form, and sometimes words and bring the piece alive. After this I began to comprehend Emerson, Eiseley, and Dillard, all authors whose words were meaningful to me. I followed their assertion to really, really look and be a conscious witness. In this way so much more will be given to you. I kept exploring and came to the woodpile on our farm of an old ash tree we had to cut down. Here I mourn her in six pieces. In the last piece, Pull the Night, I saw through a child's eyes, where the innocence is, real intuition. I began to think of dreams, time travel, and the cosmos, then I returned to my pot of boiling elements: wind and clouds bubbling in water, along with wood piles, sycamores, cows, land, dust, and the laws of nature. I began to laugh, and it was then I knew I had been restored-- my soul had been fed and magically returned to it's great capacity for joy.

- ...man himself must be his last magician. He must seek his own way home.
-Loren Eiseley

Polaroid Emulsion Lift Process For these prints I used a Daylab printer to shoot my art work (a photograph or painting) on to 669 peel-apart Polaroid film. After the print dries for 8 hours, it is then boiled in distilled water for 3-4 minutes until the image begins to separate from its backing. The print is then transferred to a tray of cold water where the image is carefully rubbed off of it's backing. What is left is a sort of jelly-fish floating in the tray- a gooey emulsion version of the print. This image is then manipulated onto a Mylar sheet and delicately transferred onto wet water color paper (or receptor of choice) where it is rolled out with a wet brayer and left to dry. The final piece can be sprayed with UV protective coating like Krylon UV Clear.

Cary will be showing with us at MJH in March and then her show will move to the WCI and NIH. To see more of her work visit her web page here click on her gallery link Les Yeux du Monde.

Crazy long lines at the Corcoran today. KT and I tried to see the Leibovitz/Adams photography shows before she left for school, but not willing to brave these loooong lines...

lots to blog.... enchanting opening at Smith Farm, that lovely Bill Mould sold 5 works of art. kudos! Tomorrow off to C'ville.

Come to an opening tonight!

Transformation

Works by Bill Mould and Anne Leighton Massoni

JAN 4 – FEB 28 2008 Gallery is open from 9AM to 5PM weekdays and by appointment.

Artist’s Receptions: Opening Event and Artists’ Reception

FRI JAN 4 5:30PM-8PM AND

CURATOR’S STATEMENT

Two artists— one a mythic exploration that evokes universal truth, the other on a familial, physical journey of personal transformation. Lillian Fitzgerald

The post reviews our "Glorious Winter" exhibit at USBG

Stripped Bare, Winter Scenes Reveal the Artistry of Nature

By Adrian Higgins
Thursday, January 3, 2008
The gardener ponders winter's paradox: The sun's rays now grow stronger and the days grow longer, but the worst of the season's weather is yet to come.
There is another odd reality to consider, that the garden is not dead and perhaps not even dormant in its capacity to yield scenes of gripping beauty.
Snow-dusted conifers provide the Currier & Ives moment, but for Roger Foley, a landscape photographer from Arlington, and for many other keen observers of the bleak spectacle, it is the time for the naked shade trees to shine. Foley might be found in public gardens at this time of year with his camera, as he says, "looking at the trees, the gestures of the trees, the feeling of how long they have been there and the stateliness of them."
All this and more is conveyed at an exhibit of winter landscape photography, "Glorious Winter," on display at the U.S. Botanic Garden until Jan. 27. In the West Orangerie, visitors will find 12 of Foley's winter images along with seven by photographer Barbara Southworth of Alexandria
Read the rest of the article here

Happy New Year! I for one slept right through it. Took a long soak in the bath and was out like a light at midnight. Here's hoping its a good year for all of us....